1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a communication system; and, more particularly, to a channel allocation apparatus and method which is capable of minimizing adjacent channel interference (hereafter, referred to as ‘ACI’) in a communication system.
2. Description of Related Art
In a current communication system, research has been actively conducted to provide various qualities of services (hereafter, referred to as ‘QoS’) of services having a high transmission rate to users. Examples of the communication system may include a wireless local area network (hereafter, referred to as ‘WLAN’) system. In the WLAN system, research has been actively conducted on a variety of methods for stably transmitting large-volume data at high speed through limited resources. Particularly, in a communication system, research has been conducted on data transmission through wireless channels. Recently, in the WLAN system, there have been proposed a variety of methods for normally transmitting and receiving large-volume data by effectively using limited wireless channels.
Meanwhile, in a current communication system, there have been proposed a variety of methods for transmitting and receiving large-volume data to a plurality of users by effectively using limited frequency channels. Particularly, in a current WLAN system, there have been proposed methods for normally transmitting and receiving data by effectively using limited frequency channels, when a base station, for example, an access point (hereafter, referred to as ‘AP’) and a plurality of terminals corresponding to a plurality of users, for example, stations (hereafter, referred to as ‘STAs’) transmit and receive large-volume data through the limited frequency channels.
In the current WLAN system, however, when the limited frequency channels are allocated to the plurality of STAs and large-volume data are then transmitted and received through the allocated frequency channels, adjacent frequency channels may be allocated to the plurality of STAs. When the data are transmitted and received through the allocated frequency channels, interference may occur between the adjacent channels of the allocated frequency channels, that is, ACI may occur. Due to the ACI, the data may not be normally transmitted and received.
Therefore, there is a demand for a channel allocation method for normally transmitting and receiving data by minimizing ACI in frequency channels allocated to a plurality of STAs, when large-volume data are transmitted and received between an AP and the plurality of STAs through limited frequency channels in a communication system, for example, the WLAN system.